answered: Choose one of the following topics and write a 1,000 word es

  

Choose one of the following topics and write a 1,000 word essay (3-4 typed pages,
double-space) in response. Make sure your answer is focused on the question and give reasons.
Don’t just respond to each portion of the question separately. Make sure you’re writing an
integrated essay, a discussion. Whatever your opinion on the matter in question, consider how
someone who disagrees with you might respond and what you might offer in answer.
1. Is Socrates’ conclusion that the poets and rhapsodes lack knowledge fair? What sort
of knowledge does Socrates seem to have in mind? Could there be other kinds? Is Socrates
confusing the knowledge necessary to make a work of art with knowledge of what’s
represented in the artwork?
2. “I’m asking you to tell me what fineness is itself,” Socrates declares to Hippias. What
kind of answer does Socrates appear to be looking for? How might artworks exhibit such a thing?
Is it necessary to know fineness itself to judge an artwork fine?
3. What view of art and artists does Plato offer in /on and Hippias Major? Are artists
only imitators? Are artists untrustworthy madmen? What are the reasons Plato offers for these
views? Are they convincing? [Look at Sheppard’s discussion of imitation in Chapter 2]
4. If art is imitative, then what kind of art would be ‘fine’ or good? Is that what we look
for in a good work of art? Is this a plausible account of what art is all about? [Look at
Sheppard’s discussion of imitation in Chapter 2] in Aesthetics- An intro to the philosophy of art.